The Evil of Shaming

When I was a freshman in high school, I often ran on the trend mill to practice for Cross Country because I was on the Varsity team. The boy next to me looked down at my legs and laughed at me, because my thighs would jiggle a little. Obviously, if someone laughs at you for your body, you’re going to be upset and offended. When is skinny *enough* for society before someone stops laughing at you? When does the judgement of someone’s beauty or ugliness stop? To me, unless you stand on a table and scream “Don’t laugh, I’m hot and I know it”, people will continue to judge you no matter how meaty or how skinny you may be. Face it, skinny people have it good, but it still sucks to be made fun of.

Yeah, fat people have it bad because social media has twisted the idea of what true beauty is. Today, you have to be tall, have a flat stomach, round and perky breasts and look pale or frail to be considered beautiful. While one may want this, people of the larger weight class make fun of skinny people too. Bones are for dogs, you say? Body shaming is not okay by any means regardless of the reason. A lot of flack that people get for being fat or skinny is because people are constantly told conflicting things about the true concept of beauty. One might be too fat, too skinny, too wrinkly, too light, or too dark or too short and tall. Think about it, the more you shame someone for their body, the more likely they are susceptible to self-esteem problems and eating disorders. The reality is 10 million women battle anorexia or bulimia because of various reasons. Some it may be because they simply can’t lose the weight, but the media and its brainwashing techniques it uses on young girls has caused most of it.

Women who are skinny may not have the capability to keep up with their eating habits simply because their metabolism is too fast to keep up. Believe it or not, skinny girls love to eat and do it whenever we want. While we may fit into society better simply for our looks, our self-esteem suffers when bigger people rag on skinnier ones for being smaller than they are. My point is that fat shaming and skinny shaming are just as negligible and hurtful as slut shaming. If I had walked up to someone and poked them in the stomach and they were large, it would be unethical and completely unacceptable. What makes it okay to poke a small person and say “You need to eat a hamburger”? Shaming one group of people will never truly solve the problem, it just makes it significantly more problematic. Regardless if you’re big or not, you’re still shaming person based on their body type. I have never been fat in my entire life because of my metabolism and the fact that from grade 7 through 12, I was an on again and off again anorexic. I realize that it is significantly more difficulty to lose weight than it is to gain, and that my body type and others who have it are more privileged than others. Beauty is what is found on the inside. Our differences is what makes us beautiful, and we should embrace it while we do have it. Skinny shaming isn’t the right way to rid fat shaming by any means. While sticks and stones may break bones, and words should never harm you – being called “anorexic” or “stick skinny” sucks, and people who scrutinize people for their body do too. The next time you sit next to someone in class, you should remember, “I don’t know their story, so I shouldn’t judge them for what they look like.”